Camelia Pasandaran – Despite its protests to the contrary, the House of Representatives does not appear overly concerned about passing legislation, the Indonesian Budget Center said on Sunday.

The center pointed out that a small portion of the state budget had been allocated for deliberating bills outlined in the National Legislation Program (Prolegnas).

"The budget to support the House's performance reaches Rp 1.22 trillion [$135 million]. But only 14.3 percent of this amount, or just Rp 173.4 billion, has been earmarked for Prolegnas," Roy Salam of the IBC said on Sunday.

Having failed to pass a single bill into law since the House's term began in October, the same month President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono embarked on his second stint in office, the House is hoping to pass at least 17 priority bills by the end of this year.

Initially, it had a goal of approving 70 bills, with 36 drafted by the House and the remainder coming from the government.

"So far they have deliberated just five bills," Roy said. "Lawmakers are failing to work on bills because they can only accommodate their own political interests. They don't care about fulfilling the constitutional duties, which is to pass legislation for the welfare of the general public."

He added that of the budget allocated for Prolegnas, Rp 4.1 billion had been allotted to fight off judicial reviews of laws at the Constitutional Court, where numerous ill-conceived measures have been challenged.

Some articles of each law generally end up being annulled. Recently however, the court voided the National Education Entity law.

Sulastio, director of the Indonesian Parliamentary Center, pointed out that in previous years lawmakers had complained of small budgets for Prolegnas.

"Now, after it has been increased, they still fail to improve their performance. The real problem is actually competence, not the budget."

Sulastio was referring to IBC's statement that even as the budget allocation for deliberating bills listed in the Prolegnas was relatively small at Rp 173.4 billion, it was still 76 times larger than that allocated for the national legislation program in 2005.

"A majority of the newly elected House members are lacking in experience. They also tend to delay the deliberation of bills because once they start, they will in any case be limited by two House working periods [of three months each].

They prefer to settle differences between themselves and the government before taking bills into the deliberation phase," Sulastio said.

"The people's money is being wasted on those who don't understand legislation." Arif Wibowo, a member of the House Legislation Body, said that the slow productivity of the House should be seen from a different perspective.

"Most of the bills that have not been discussed yet are the bills initiated by the government. If the House wants to be pragmatic, we could finish it sooner, but we need long time to debate on a bill so we can in the end produce a law we can be responsible for," Arif said.

"Two working sessions for deliberation is not enough," Arif said, adding that many of the proposed bills to be initiated by the government had not been finished.

Out of the 34 bills written by the House, Arif claimed that 31 have been drafted and deliberations had already begun.